1993 Upper Deck

I didn't think I was ever going to get to these. These are one of my all-time favorite 90's sets. Top 5 material. So many great cards and themes in this set. Upper Deck had the knack for pulling off the cheesy subsets, but without making them look cheesy. I offer up the Motown Mashers card as exhibit A.

Upper Deck was still doing the team checklist cards with the great paintings on the front, which I always though looked better than the Dick Perez paintings over at Donruss. This is just a great card of Travis Fryman. 

This base card of Rico Brogna is one of the all-time best Tiger cards. I have always thought it was cool as hell how they lined up the photo so that the OED on his cap replaced the D in the UPPER DECK crawl across the top of the card.

The 1993 Upper Deck Detroit Tigers:

46 Motown Mashers

63 Scott Livingstone

68 Frank Tanana

86 Mickey Tettleton

95 Mark Leiter

162 Milt Cuyler

195 Tony Phillips

217 Rob Deer

251 Dan Gladden

273 Lou Whitaker

364 Travis Fryman

378 John Kiely

386 Rico Brogna

398 Bill Gullickson

403 Mike Henneman

446 Rick Greene

455 Travis Fryman - Peter Gammons By The Numbers

499 Cecil Fielder - RBI Champion

512 Mike Moore

530 Bill Krueger

532 Alan Trammell

564 Cecil Fielder

601 Mike Munoz

633 Tom Bolton

685 Greg Gohr

699 David Wells

757 John Doherty

766 Kirk Gibson

836 Team Checklist

Hell, I even love the card of Mark Leiter looking like he just watched a Mark Leiter start....

There were a lot of insert cards, but Upper Deck was still banging out great looking cards with those too. I can't seem to find any info on this Travis Fryman card, other than it was from a set called Diamond Gallery, and it was card #25, but I don't know if it was an insert set or something else. But it looks cool too. The scan doesn't do the hologram justice.

Clutch Performers

R9 Cecil Fielder

Home Run Heroes

HR 3 Cecil Fielder

Iooss Collection

WI23 Cecil Fielder

On Deck

D11 Cecil Fielder

1993 Score Select

This is another one of those stupid Score sets that was absolute crap and everybody knew it when it came out. For starters, just what in the hell was "Select" about it? There were 405 base cards, 162 insert cards, and 150 Traded cards. By my rough count that's over 700 cards. Not very "Select" in my book. That ratio of base cards to insert cards is something Topps would be very proud of. 

The 1993 Score Select Detroit Tigers:

20 Cecil Fielder

44 Travis Fryman

60 Mickey Tettleton

85 Bill Gullickson

112 Lou Whitaker

138 Mike Henneman

166 Milt Cuyler

186 Rob Deer

218 Tony Phillips

230 Alan Trammell

244 Dan Gladden

298 John Doherty

306 Kurt Knudsen

320 Scott Livingstone

335 Phil Clark

398 Frank Tanana

There was an update set, and it's a shame I don't have any of these because these were three of my favorite Tigers from that era of crappiness.

1993 Score Select Rookie & Traded: 

80T Chris Gomez

92T Eric Davis

113T David Wells

Now for the insert cards. I think the card pictured above speaks volumes about the overabundance of insert cards. Tony Phillips. This may be the card where the ship sailed on insert cards being "special." 

1993 Select Chase Stars

13 Cecil Fielder

1993 Select Stat Leaders

27 Cecil Fielder

31 Cecil Fielder

37 Tony Phillips

I guess it could have been worse. They could have put Cecil Fielder on another insert card instead of TP.

You know the worst part about this set. They don't really look all that bad. This could have been one of Score's nicer sets. 

1993 Pinnacle

Everything I said about 1992 Pinnacle applies here. All of it. 

Except.....

Just this week there was a discussion about the quality of Jack Morris' bad 'stache in the Detroit Tigers Forum at Worldcrossing.com (see sidebar). I think this pretty much ends all discussion. At least now I can see what exactly he was trying to cover....

The 1993 Pinnacle Detroit Tigers:

26 Cecil Fielder

52 Mickey Tettleton

79 Travis Fryman

106 Scott Livingstone

114 David Wells

193 Milt Cuyler

202 Mike Moore

240 Rico Brogna

264 Rich Rowland

287 Phil Clark

333 Dan Gladden

352 BIll Gullickson

353 Alan Trammell

385 Mike Henneman

406 Tony Phillips

407 John Doherty

429 Eric Davis

472 Jack Morris Now & Then

509 Lou Whitaker

547 Bill Krueger

615 Greg Gohr

There were a slew of insert sets. The only one I have is not even listed in the checklist book I am using, so I don't know much about it.

Cooperstown Card

28 Cecil Fielder

Slugfest

3 Cecil Fielder

30 Travis Fryman

Team 2001

10 Travis Fryman

1993 Score

Now that the holiday season is over and most of the resolutions have been broken (I'm not buying any packs or boxes of 2009 cards, but that's for another entry...) it's time to get back to blogging about Detroit Tigers baseball cards!!!

Which makes it such a shame that 1993 Score is where I left off. They went from the one end of the spectrum to the other with this design. I prefer the cleaner more visually appealing look of this more than any other Score set, but then they went and screwed it up by squishing the letters on the players' names to where they are almost illegible. I have to hold one of these right in front of my face to read the player name. Maybe they were just getting us ready for Topps use of goil foil.

The 1993 Score Detroit Tigers:

11 Travis Fryman

31 Cecil Fielder

60 Mickey Tettleton

82 Milt Cuyler

114 Rico Brogna

166 Mike Henneman

196 Scott Livingstone

207 Dan Gladden

215 David Haas

228 Mike Munoz

264 Kurt Knudsen

283 Rich Rowland

313 Alan Trammell

353 John Doherty

366 Mark Carreon

442 Gary Pettis

596 Lou Whitaker

614 Tony Phillips

636 Rob Deer

643 Bill Gullickson

652 Frank Tanana

Score really scaled down the operation in 1993, only releasing a few insert sets.

Boys Of Summer

17 Rico Brogna

30 Rich Rowland

Franchise

6 Cecil Fielder

They didn't even bother with an update set, so neither will I!

1993 Triple Play

For the second year in a row Donruss came up with a nice looking card for their Triple Play release. Is this day and age of hard to read player names that have been foil stamped on the cards, I like it that the name is plastered across the top in 30 point type.

For whatever reason, this set is not listed in my team set checklist book, so my attempt at putting one together may be inaccurate. (I've only got four of these cards, so I'll give it a shot....)

The 1993 Donruss Triple Play Detroit Tigers:

5 Cecil Fielder

44 Milt Cuyler

59 Travis Fryman

92 Mickey Tettleton

137 Rob Deer

176 Tony Phillips

191 Alan Trammell

224 Lou Whitaker

There were some sort of scratch off insert game cards. I kinda remember these, but not really all that much.

15 Cecil Fielder

Also a League Leaders insert card that I don't recall at all.

L5 Cecil Fielder

1993 Studio

It's not often I praise a Donruss release, but I will do so here. This is one of the nicest looking sets ever made. This was such a simple concept that it begs the question of why it was never done before. The only thing I don't like about this set is that I didn't collect the entire thing. Even the foil stamping looks elegant when used in this format. 

Of course it's a shame that they found the doofious (yeah, I made it up, so what?) picture of Kirk Gibson they could possibly dig up, but I still love them. I may have to hunt down a complete set on ebay after the holidays. These are that nice. (I just looked and you can find one for about $15-20. Not a bad deal at all for a set this awesome.)

The 1993 Studio Detroit Tigers:

26 Rob Deer

37 Cecil Fielder

76 Lou Whitaker

108 Travis Fryman

138 Mickey Tettleton

165 Kirk Gibson

213 Tony Phillips

Okay, I only have two beefs with this set. How the hell could they leave out Alan Trammell, yet include Jerald Clark and Orestes Destrade? How?

There is an insert card that I was never aware of at any time in life until fifteen seconds ago. 

Silhouettes #5 Travis Fryman

1993 Leaf

Another Donruss issue that looks like it borrowed heavily from '92 Fleer Ultra. Same old marble background corner and goil foil circle thingy. Pretty lackluster and unimaginative. Much like this paragraph. 

This is also another one of those sets where the backs of the cards look better than the fronts. At least in concept maybe. I mean, instead of just putting two different shots of the Ren Cen in the background, why not mix it up a little bit some other iconic Detroit landmarks like Motown Studios, the Windsor Tunnel, or even the downtown Borders on Woodward Ave.?

The 1993 Leaf Detroit Tigers:

16 Travis Fryman

38 Milt Cuyler

60 Dan Gladden

81 Mike Henneman

103 Bill Gullickson

110 Tettleton/Fryman

126 Tony Phillips

148 Lou Whitaker

191 Mike Munoz

213 Mickey Tettleton

246 Rob Deer

283 Cecil Fielder

314 Kirk Gibson

348 Bill Krueger

375 Scott Livingstone

401 Mike Moore

421 Alan Trammell

463 Chad Kreuter

484 David Wells

534 John Doherty

I have no way of verifying that this checklist card #110 is of Mickey Tettleton doing a flip over the railing while Travis Fryman watches from the dugout, but my theory is the only one I've ever heard, so I'm running with it. 

There were a few ho-hum insert cards. And by ho-hum I mean, "Oh really? Who gives a shit about a Greg Gohr insert card?"

Fasttrack #19 Travis Fryman

Gold All Stars #3 Cecil Fielder

Gold Rookies #6 Greg Gohr

1993 Donruss

I like this set although it kinda reminds me of '92 Fleer Ultra. I think it's the embossed look of the little diamond and bar on the front, I dunno. I do know however that this was Donruss best effort since '84. 

I love the pic of Shawn Hare with the bat back on his shoulder as the ball is about to whiz by him. I like what they did with the checklists too. A Fryman-Livingstone high five should be preserved for all of eternity. 

The 1993 Donruss Detroit Tigers:

13 Mickey Tettleton

41 Rico Brogna

71 Mark Carreon

77 Rich Rowland

99 Kevin Ritz

127 Travis Fryman

145 Kurt Knudsen

173 Milt Cuyler

203 John Kiely

231 Rob Deer

259 Mike Henneman

277 John Doherty

305 Shawn Hare

335 Dave Haas

391 Phil Clark

409 Scott Livingstone

437 Skeeter Barnes

467 Dan Gladden

495 Mark Leiter

523 Bill Gullickson

541 Cecil Fielder

569 Buddy Groom

599 Frank Tanana

605 Greg Gohr

627 Mike Munoz

655 Alan Trammell

673 Chad Kreuter

686 Lou Whitaker

701 Tony Phillips

772 Walt Terrell

There is also a card of Scott Aldred pictured as a Tiger but listed as a Rockie, #733.

They ran out the same looking Diamond Kings in '93 as they did in '92.

DK-15 Cecil Fielder

There were a few inserts, all of which featured Cecil Fielder.

Elite 34 Cecil Fielder

MVP 17 Cecil Fielder

Spirit of the Game 10 Cecil Fielder, Rob Deer, and Mickey Tettleton

I don't have a lot here. I really don't, and I've had two weeks to think about it. Beer is not even getting the juices flowing.

1993 Fleer Flair

These are great looking cards (despite the goil foil, but I won't go into it again...) but I never look at these without thinking of those cheesy high school senior yearbook pictures that debuted in the 80's with the ghosted head shot looking in a different direction than the other picture. I guess it could be worse, Fleer could have issued a set with everybody wearing painters caps, skinny wool ties, or having big oversized combs sticking out of their back pockets. 

The 1993 Fleer Flair Detroit Tigers:

200 John Doherty

201 Cecil Fielder

202 Travis Fryman

203 Kirk Gibson

204 Mike Henneman

205 Chad Kreuter

206 Scott Livingstone

207 Tony Phillips

208 Mickey Tettleton

209 Alan Trammell

210 David Wells

211 Lou Whitaker

1993 Fleer Ultra

My guess is that someone at Fleer figured out that if you make a set so beautiful it ranks as one of the all time best, why mess with it? So they made a few tweaks and released another great looking Ultra set in '93. Not quite as good as '92, but it's so damn close there's not really much to say that I haven't already said about the '92's. 

I absolutely love that card of David Haas looking like he's about to try and field the flaming baseball logo that is headed for his feet. His eyes are staring right at it. Magnificent.

The 1993 Fleer Ultra Detroit Tigers:

194 Milt Cuyler

195 Rob Deer

196 John Doherty

197 Travis Fryman

198 Dan Gladden

199 Mike Henneman

200 John Kiely

201 Chad Kreuter

202 Scott Livingstone

203 Tony Phillips

204 Alan Trammell

548 Cecil Fielder

549 Kirk Gibson

550 Greg Gohr

551 David Haas

552 Bill Krueger

553 Mike Moore

554 Mickey Tettleton

555 Lou Whitaker

I only know about one insert card, and I don't have it.

Home Run Kings

3  Cecil Fielder

1993 Fleer

Wow, I didn't realize that it's been over two weeks since my last entry. Between Facebook, other writing projects, and just plain writer's block when thinking about the upcoming lackluster 90's sets, I just haven't been able to muster up the gumption to get on here and keep plugging away. But with a little help from my friends at Anheuser-Busch, maybe I can get something going tonight.

There were a couple of great looking issues from Fleer in '93. This wasn't one of them. This is quite possibly one of the most boring sets ever. But compared to a lot of the crap that came out in the 90's, boring is ok. 

At the time I actually thought these were pretty cool and collected the whole 9 billion card base set, which I gave away shortly after completing. But I kept the Tigers cards, so here they are, pink trim be damned. 

The 1993 Fleer Detroit Tigers:

224 Milt Cuyler

225 Rob Deer

226 John Doherty

227 Cecil Fielder

228 Trvis Fryman

229 Mike Henneman

230 John Kiely

231 Kurt Knudsen

232 Scott Livingstone

233 Tony Phillips

234 Mickey Tettleton

345  League Leaders Cecil Fielder

603 Skeeter Barnes

604 Mark Carreon

605 Dan Gladden

606 Bill Gullickson

607 Chad Kreuter

608 Mark Leiter

609 Mike Munoz

610 Rich Rowland

611 Frank Tanana

612 Walt Terrell

613 Alan Trammell

614 Lou Whitaker

711 Round Trippers Cecil Fielder

714 Super Star Special Cecil Fielder

There were a few different inserts, but I only have one. At least it was the one of one of the greatest players in MLB history, and I'm not talking about Cecil. (sorry, that's a Detroit Tigers Forum inside joke.....check out the link in the sidebar to find many more)

1993 AL All-Stars

5 Cecil Fielder

Major League Prospects

15 Rico Brogna

Pro-Visions II

3 Cecil Fielder

Rookie Sensations

6 Scott Livingstone

Fleer introduced the mother of all update sets in '93, with this one checking in at 300 cards. So essentially it was a full third series. No inserts that I know of, but a nice list of Tigers.

1993 Fleer Final Edition:

209F Kirk Gibson

210F Greg Gohr

211F Bill Krueger

212F Bob MacDonald

213F Mike Moore

214F David Wells

I've mentioned before my rule of collecting Tigers team sets, but it was a long time ago, so I'll mention it again, because one of the rules applies here. My general rule of thumb is that if the team listed on the front says "Detroit Tigers" and the player is pictured in another uniform, or like the '88 Topps Dickie Noles card it says in small print something about playing for the Tigers, or the player featured is in a Tigers uniform even though he is listed on another team, he goes in my team set collection. 

It's sort of hard for me to keep track of these because I don't have the full sets to look through to verify that I have these exceptions. The folks who published the team set book I am using (which is getting very near it's end) don't see it the way I see it. So I'm more or less at the mercy of either having it or not to be able to list it here. 

Three paragraphs about this lousy Kevin Ritz card. It may not be quality, but I's say the writers block has lifted for the time being. 

1993 Bowman

On the flip side, I have come to love blogging about Bowman cards, simply to look back at the Tigers I have absolutely no recollection of......

1993 Bowman Detroit Tigers:

11 Lou Whitaker

39 Chris Gomez

67 Travis Fryman

95 Danny Bautista

151 Kenny Carlisle

179 Mike Moore

207 Ben Blomdahl

235 Scott Livingstone

263 Rick Greene

291 Brian Edmondson

319 Ivan Cruz

332 Rob Deer

391 Alan Trammell

419 Tony Phillips

447 Justin Mashore

475 Cecil Fielder

503 Jason Pfaff

531 Sean Bergman

559 Mike Henneman

587 Justin Thompson

615 Mickey Tettleton

643 Felipe Lira

671 Greg Gohr

Add Carlisle, Blomdahl, Edmondson, Mashore, and Pfaff to the list. I swear I think Bowman made some of these guys up. Hell, I don't remember Greene or Cruz except for seeing them on other cards. Boy did we suck back then.....

1993 Stadium Club

I don't think I have ever liked a Stadium Club set, but hands down that is the best Tony Phillips card ever. 

1993 Stadium Club:

5 Tony Phillips

31 Mickey Tettleton

65 Kurt Knudsen

116 Mark Leiter

135 Lou Whitaker

156 Milt Cuyler

191 Danny Gladden

212 John Kiely

223 Walt Terrell

248 Mike Munoz

267 Frank Tanana

328 Scott Livingstone

357 Rob Deer

389 Skeeter Barnes

416 Alan Trammell

448 Travis Fryman

480 Mike Henneman

503 Cecil Fielder

519 Rich Rowland

530 Rico Brogna

574 Bill Gullickson

673 Kirk Gibson

685 Greg Gohr

693 Mike Moore

I want one of those caps. Better yet I'd like to see an Indians card from 1993 with one of those throwbacks just to see what they look like. 

1993 Topps

Well between facebook and the election I have been severely slacking around here getting some stuff up. Hopefully I can get on a roll and get this finished by the end of the year so I can move on to newer stuff as well as the unveiling of my own personally designed set of baseball cards. With that being said, let's get going.

If I've said it once, I've said it at least more than once, but never on cyberspace though, and here it is: 1993 Topps was the last great base set they ever made. As far as I'm concerned, they've never even come close, and I don't even have any sentimental attachment to this set. (Other than that bitching card of Buddy Groom in the cool throwback. Check out the rotting Cleveland Municpal Stadium in the background.....) 

It's just a nice looking set. It's uncluttered, easy to read (gold foil will change all that in the years to come) and has some really nice subsets too. In fact, I wish Topps did more things like having multiple managers/all-stars/prospects on a single card. 

The Coming Attractions, Manager, and All-Star cards are nice in an innovative yet not too flashy sort of way. Since I mostly only collect Tigers, it's also a cool way to get some other guys that I normally wouldn't pay attention to, like Art Howe and Barry Larkin. The only thing bad about the Phil Clark Coming Attractions card is that Phil Clark is on it. Otherwise it's a nifty looking card. I know I've bashed the silly Score subsets in the past, and deservedly so, but these never gave off that chintzy vibe to me that Score did. 

The 1993 Topps Detroit Tigers:

26 Skeeter Barnes

53 Frank Tanana

80 Cecil Fielder

107 John Kiely

135 Mickey Tettleton

160 Lou Whitaker

189 Tony Phillips

216 Mark Leiter

233 Rick Greene

243 Rob Deer

272 Kurt Knudsen

298 Scott Livingstone

325 Bill Gullickson

353 Buddy Groom

379 Mike Munoz

392 Travis Fryman

423 Ivan Cruz

429 Milt Cuyler

491 Shawn Hare

506 Sparky Anderson

536 Dave Haas

567 Mark Carreon

598 Rico Brogna

626 Danny Gladden

660 Alan Trammell

692 Chad Kreuter

713 John Doherty

756 Mike Henneman

802 Phil Clark

The Traded set was short but sweet.

8T Kirk Gibson

50T David Wells

Topps continued with those crappy goil foil parallels that are just about impossible to read. Had I known they would eventually ALWAYS use the gold foil, I might not have disliked these so much.

In an obvious attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Soul Asylum, Topps debuted the Black Gold insert set. These could have left without a trace and nobody would have cared. They were definitely not the runaway train that Topps had hoped for......

30 Cecil Fielder

41 Mickey Tettleton